The Joys of xargs - page 3

xargs and find

You can use xargs if you need to rename lots of files (e.g.
datestamping). This command will rename each file in the current
directory from filename.txt to 20080815-filename.txt:

ls | xargs -I {} mv {} 20080815-{}

This works because {} is a placeholder meaning "the current argument". (You
can use xxx or yyy or any other string instead of {} if you want, as well, and
it'll do exactly the same thing.) -I implies -n1, because
you want to act on each file individually.

Or you might want to move all the files in directory 1 into directory 2: